


in the form of someone

by brawltogethernow



Category: Marvel, Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Gen, Minor Character Death, Peter Parker Lives, Spider-Men (Comics), as in our miles dies but not within the fic, brief snapshot of a full redo, shiny peter and grody miles: the buddy cop comedy duo, there is literally NO audience for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-30 07:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21424213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brawltogethernow/pseuds/brawltogethernow
Summary: After failing to save the kid at Fisk's collider with his powers, Peter has mixed feelings about being haunted by other versions of him who aren't quite as bright-eyed.Wrong Peter, wrong Miles, but they'll probably figure it out.
Relationships: Miles Morales & Peter Parker
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	in the form of someone

**Author's Note:**

> This Miles, who I'm imagining is from Peter B.'s world, is scraped with mild alterations from the character depicted as being Earth-616's native Miles in _Spider-Men II_, who is like...a good guy, but also absolutely the Kingpin's bosom brother, and is also the source material for _Spider-Verse_'s plot about being so unable to let your loved ones go you invest in dimensional travel. A real problematic fave.

“Got a name, gruesome?” asked Peter. “I can’t just call you Hopscotch Face.” Not very kind _or_ very funny, but sue him if he’d been feeling a little abrasive since the thing in Brooklyn.

Peter hadn’t been able to do anything for the kid who’d fallen through the explosion of color and sound inside Fisk’s collider, in the end. He’d tried, God, he had. So hard he’d barely gotten away himself. But you fail sometimes. You fail even when it really matters. In the end he had gotten away, and the kid hadn’t, and that was that.

“It’s Miles,” said the man. “Morales.”

He may not have saved the kid, but he had _seen_ him, and he did _not_ look like this.

“The hell it is,” said Peter, who had learned this name from the local news but still felt possessive of it. That kid had been _like him._ And this dude? Was not, at least according to the hairs on the back of Peter’s neck.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Miles-so-called-Morales demanded, looking like he was feeling scrappy and ready to start a fight. Take a number, pal. Peter was the king of scrappy fight starting.

That name, in Peter’s eyes, was now irrevocably tied to the face of the boy from the collider. And that boy had not been this pale, had not had bubbling knife scars criss-crossing his face, had not been dressed in all black and fancy enough for either the mob or business so slick there was barely a difference, and he certainly had not been within a couple years of Peter’s age.

Not to be operating off internal biases, but the scars gave Peter a bad feeling. They made the man look dangerous.

“So I break into a crime boss’s lair,” says Peter. “I break in there, I find you skulking around a crime scene. And then you tried to hit me with a lamp.”

“It wasn’t a lamp.”

“It was lamp-shaped. It’s called simplifying. What were you doing poking Fisk’s big science project?”

The man’s eyes widened. "Wilson made that?”

“Oh, you _know_ him!” Peter threw out his arms. “Doesn’t _that _just take the cake. Isn’t that just charming. I love it when they know each other.”

“Hey,” the man snarled, surprise melting back into resting dangerface. “I’m not any they, okay? Whatever you’re assuming I’m involved in…I’m not. Anymore.”

“Any_more?!_” Peter said incredulously.

“I’m retired,” said maybe-Morales. “Okay? I never even liked it. Left town for good, just wanted a quiet life. I didn’t ask for _this_.”

Peter had a hunch. There wasn’t anything much backing it, but his hunches were usually good.

“Left town, you say,” he said. He cocked his head at who-is-this-dude, twisting his neck in a way he knew made the big bugging eyes of his mask look unsettlingly ogling.

Imposterface shifted uncomfortably.

“Ha!” burst Peter, pointing with his whole arm like this had been a confession. “I knew it! You’ve been hopping universes! _Very_ naughty.” He wagged his finger in a parody of a chiding schoolmarm. “Did it _implode_ your Brooklyn the way it’s going to mine?” And for the finisher he rose to his full height, tipped his head down menacingly, and added in a dark growl: “Or did you leave so fast you wouldn’t know.”

Whosit’s face twisted. Or maybe he just pouted a little, and it made his scars twist. Peter was getting the hang of his face, see if he didn’t.

“Not to _this_ one,” he insisted. “I’m _trapped_ here.”

“Sounds rough, buddy.”

“I wouldn’t have done it if — not for a price like that. It’s a quiet thing.”

“Quiet.”

“A heckuva lot quieter than the psychedelic mess that brought me here, anyway. I saw it tested. A little light show, a little science, a little magic, you walk through, you’re there, and it’s only one way.” His expression went stormy. “Which was fine, when I did it on purpose. But now I’ve been yanked here, and I would like to go _back_.”

“Ugh, magic,” said Peter. Just the worst. Can’t reverse-engineer it. Well, _he_ couldn’t, and he didn’t like calling in favors and then waiting on the people with the right specialties to do the job while he twiddled his thumbs. Not a _bit._ Well, problem for if it came up. Or maybe solution. “So you’re a bit of a veteran of the interdimensional tourism thing, huh?”

“I’m not—I left to look for my wife, okay? You see her around here?” He threw his arms open and twisted around a little, showcasing the empty rooftop. “‘Cause I sure don’t.”

“…For your wife,” said Peter. He rolled his eyes and said, half to himself, half not to himself because it was funnier that way, “Ugh, and I’m slapped in the face with something I’m forced to empathize with for my hubris.” Then louder again, dialing up the sound projection: “Just to clarify, you weren’t going to kidnap an alternate version of her to your dimension come hell or high water, were you? Just covering my bases, you understand. Villain plots, amirite?” Dude’s backstory sounded like a twisted mirror of what Fisk was trying, to a T. But the difference in destructive insanity involved might be the kicker that decided which way this little Spider-Man jumped.

The traveler’s response to Peter’s flippancy was frank, and open, and honest. “I just wanted a second chance to find her,” said…

Said Peter’s second chance at doing right by Miles.

Oboy.

This was going to be a mess. He could feel it. Not with his spider sense, just in his jellies. You get finely tuned jellies after being slammed into thirty or forty walls by women with mechanical tentacles.

“You and your Fisk—you close?”

His expression went grim. Grimmer. It looked like he was always a little grim. Dude could use some lightening up. “I’d trust him with more than just my life. With my soul.”

Well, that was heavy. Peter spun around, hopping up to crouch on the guard rail. “You can talk to him, then. Maybe we can end this all with talking, after all.” He swiveled his torso around to squint at the grumpy guest in his dimension. “You’re not so bad, are you,” he said with a nod. “Maybe you are a Miles Morales.”

The man snorted in disgust. “Buddy, I don’t know what you’re on, but I’m the _only_ Miles Morales.”

“That’s what you think,” said Peter. He twisted, caught in the moment of balance right before tipping over, and pointed at Morales with two fingers. “I still don’t exactly trust you! Even with your sort of…” He flicked his fingers up and down the man. “Quiet tormented nobility vibe you’ve got going on here.” He let gravity take the lead and took the leap off the roof he’d hauled his visitor onto. Half habit, half to see how Morales would catch up.

Morales darted forward, hands slamming onto the guard rail as he leaned over it to shout after Peter. “So what, you’re helping me now?”

“Call it a leap of faith!” Peter called back over the rush of the wind.

“Oh, sure,” the man said skeptically, voice being eaten fast by the Doppler effect. “Hey! Wait up, you oversized insect!”

Peter waited until he hit the nadir of his swing and rose back up into sight to shout back, “That’s oversized _arachnid!_”


End file.
